TENNYSONS ULYSSES ANALYSIS

The present poem is written by the British poet Alfred Tennyson after his friend Arthur Henry Hallam’s death.

Starting from the title, Ulysses, it recalls the greek hero Omero narrated about. To make some hypothesis, the title could anticipate a poem in which the author presents the classical Ulysses under a different light, using him to talk about the modern society. But it could also refer to a person the poet wants to write about who has some similarities to Ulysses. However, its not easy to have expactations on such a general title.

Considering the structure, the poem is organized into lines, written in blank verse. The one who’s talking in first person is Ulysses, the greek hero, who has returned to Ithaca after his long journey. It can be divided into four sequences according to different thoughts the protagonist has.

So the content can be analyzed by dividing the poem into four parts. The first one contains the considerations Ulysses makes about Ithaca, where he no longer finds reasons to live. The second one is dedicated to his memories about his past adventures with his old friends. The third one his about his son Telemachus to whom entrusts the guide of their people. The last one is about the exhortation Ulysses pronounces to his old friends to leave once again for a new adventure, to fill their life with emotions and knowledge of the world until the end.

For what concerns the sound level, the poem has not a real rhythm as one can find in many other poems, since it sounds more like an exhortation before a battle from an epic poem, like Omero’s one. Many verses end in the middle of a line and the frequent use of enjamenbements makes the poem fluid. Sound figures are not easy to find, apart from allitterations. On a semantic level, words used change according to the sequence, but the reader can find a common point, indeed, the expressions used often recalls the semantic fields of adventure, life, feelings, emotions, which are scattered along the entire poem and contribute to improve the idea of a dramatic monologue. It is interesting to notice how the poet often uses adjectives to add sense to the images he’s describing, for example “rainy Hyades”, “dim sea”, “ringing plains”. Moreover, adjectives arouse a sense of value and contribute to present Ulysses as a strong hero even if he’s old. From a syntactical point of view, sentences are often long and pauses are created through colons and semi-colons which determine a not regular rhythm. Full stops do not necessarly coincide with the end of the lines. For what concerns figures of speech, the most frequent are synesthesia (“dim sea”, “sounding furrows”), metaphors (“And drunk delight of battle”), personifications (“barren crags”,“hungry heart”, “There gloom the dark, broad seas”), similies (“To follow knowledge like a sinking star”). The language used recalls an epic discourse, tipycal of epic poems. The reader can notice how the language of sense impressions makes him imagine epic and infinite landscapes where Ulysses’ adventures took place.

The overall effect the poem gives to the reader is a mixture of emotions, nostalgia, feelings and sense that life has to be completely lived, wasting no time, trying to discover the world as deep as you can, because life is only a “long day” that “wanes”, as Ulysses says.

The ideal reader might be anyone, since the present poem can be read both as a recall to the greek hero after his adventures and as a declaration of sorrow after an author’s friend’s death.